Archive of Our Own ^beta

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“Gender studies?” Langa paused after she read out that elective option. “What’s that?”

“Well, I assume it’s the study of gender.” Her mom was teasing, she knew, but Langa was being serious.

“Yeah, I got that, thanks.” She rolled her eyes and her mom laughed, entirely unhelpful. “Seriously, how much is there to study about gender?”

“I’m not sure,” her mom’s smile dropped into a more thoughtful look, “you could always take it and find out?”

She did just that, submitted her class selections, and closed the laptop with a thump.

“Are you excited?” Her mom asked, her smile was back, but gentler now.

“I’m excited to not have to wear uniforms anymore.” Langa smirked and propped her chin in her hand. “And to not have to take religion.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that.” Her mom cringed a little along with her breathy chuckle.

“Not your fault.” Langa shrugged, there were no other schools in the area, and her dad hadn’t been moved in a while, so there was really no other choice but for Langa to attend a catholic elementary school. But the high school she’d chosen had a wider catchment, meaning she could enroll in the public school system for her remaining years of education.

Well, as long as her dad didn’t get moved.

She wore the same suit she wore to her cousin’s wedding for eighth grade graduation. Her grandmother was just as angry about it as she had been at the wedding, but her parents kept the comments to a minimum. More photos from that day were added to the album she was putting together, the one that only showcased her smiling genuinely. The book was sparsely populated, really, it only contained pictures of her and her parents on the slopes, at Allison’s wedding, and at graduation.

Hard as Langa tried, she couldn’t begin to piece together why her smiles were so much brighter in the photos she fished out of the boxes versus the ones that were shoved back into storage.

Summer was boring, there was no snowboarding during the warmer months. She hung out with friends a few times, mostly playing basketball and football at the park. They’d long since cast aside their reservations about tackling her, which she appreciated. Well, she didn’t appreciate the tackling, but she did appreciate the lack of caution.

Orientation was overwhelming, to say the least. An auditorium full of ninth-graders who ranged from terrified to thinking they were hot shit was not Langa’s idea of a good time. She fell somewhere in the middle, though more towards the terrified end of the spectrum. She couldn’t say a word, not even to her friends from elementary school, who were already joking around and acting like they owned the place. She just stuck to them during the tour and the presentations and waited until she got home to meltdown. That was a challenge, keeping herself together on the walk home, but she managed. Her dad was there when she got in the door and lost her mind. He just held her and let her cry herself out, the way he always did, and didn’t push when she said she didn’t want to talk about it.

The first day of classes was better, but not by much. First period was math, what a terrible way to start the day. Second was French, not her favourite, but easy. Third was lunch, and she was able to spot her rowdy group of friends the moment she walked into the cafeteria. She really wasn’t in the mood for their usual horsing around, but being around them was comforting. They were familiar at least. Fourth brought English, something Langa actually enjoyed, and the last period of the day was the mysterious gender studies.

The room was full of rainbows and posters and stickers that declared it a “safe space,” whatever that meant. There weren’t desks like in her other classrooms, there were hexagonal tables meant for discussion. Great. She’d probably be making acquaintance with her guidance counselor sooner than she thought. She slid into a chair by the door, in case a quick escape would be required, and waited for the rest of the room to fill in.

“Hello, gender studies, my name is Ms. Mallory!” A bubbly woman who was apparently named Ms. Mallory addressed the class from the front of the room. She had pastel purple hair that Langa really liked, but she didn’t think it looked natural, not like her own light blue strands. “I’d like to start class today by taking attendance, and please let me know of your preferred name and pronouns when I call your listed name.”

Preferred name and pronouns? Langa wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. Sure, she knew what a pronoun was, but what did that have to do with gender studies?

Names flew by, some people asked to be called by a nickname, one or two wanted to be called by a different name entirely, and each person followed their name by saying she/her or he/him. All but one person, who said their pronouns were they/them. Langa had never heard of that before. One person being referred to as they or them…

Actually, that wasn’t the case, was it? If someone said something like ‘the cashier was a real jerk’ she would respond with ‘really, what did they do?’ wouldn’t she?

Interesting… To want to be referred to like that…

“Langa Hasegawa?”

She startled when she heard her name, and Ms. Mallory picked her out immediately from the slight ruckus she caused by knocking her pen off the desk.

“What is your preferred name?” Ms. Mallory’s smile was kind, genuine feeling, but Langa couldn’t meet her eyes. Her gaze fled to the center of his teacher’s forehead and she just barely managed to mumble back that Langa was fine. “Okay, and pronouns?”

“Uh…” She shifted in her seat and her eyes started dancing around the room, landing on one too many other students’ faces before latching firmly to the desk. “She/her, I guess?”

It hit her quickly, the weird feeling of wrong she’d felt so many times, but why? She’d only ever been referred to with those pronouns, so why now was she feeling that strange, cold ache spreading out from her heart?

It was because she was forced to speak in front of the class. It had to be. Obviously. It was just the anxiety. Right? Right.

Right?

The rest of the names were called and then curriculum guides and the first unit booklets were passed out to the class. Ms. Mallory had a presentation prepared, one that vaguely went over each unit they’d be studying and opened the floor to questions.

Langa was just staring at her curriculum guide.

So many words she didn’t understand. Ms. Mallory was probably explaining them, but Langa couldn’t hear her. She was still stuck on the preferred names, the preferred pronouns, the person who wanted to be called they/them.

The bell didn’t even shake her out of it.

Ms. Mallory's hand on her shoulder did, though.

In fact, it shook her right to the floor.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Ms. Mallory held out a hand, probably the same one that had scared Langa out of her chair, to try and help her up, but Langa just waved her off and got to her feet herself. “I didn’t mean to scare you, Langa, I just- you didn’t hear the bell? You looked a little… lost.”

“Sorry.” Langa shoved her things in her bag as she muttered her apology and rushed out of the room before Ms. Mallory could say anything else.

“Welcome home!” Her mom was in the living room when Langa slammed the door behind her and dashed upstairs without acknowledging her.

She couldn’t respond when her mom followed her up to her room and asked about her day, just wrote out fine. tired. on her phone, which got her mom to leave her alone.

The research began the moment the door closed.

They/them pronouns apparently indicated a person was nonbinary, or maybe agender. Langa had never heard of those terms before. They were under the trans umbrella, along with gender fluidity, genderqueer, trans men and women… so many terms, so many new labels.

Apparently, people who were trans experienced something called gender dysphoria? Something like a disconnect between their mind and their body. And then there was gender euphoria, when things felt good?

And people could change their gender. They could change their names and pronouns and even take hormones and surgeries to feel better about themselves. Was that the euphoria? Changing and feeling better?

She didn’t understand. She didn’t understand any of it.

But something stirred.

Something kicked up dust in her racing mind.

But the thoughts were spinning too fast to latch onto whatever it was she was trying to remember. Or realize. Or whatever.

Something like a growl left her and she threw her phone across the room before she could think better. The regret hit before the device had even left her hands. She watched as it sailed, flinched when it smacked against the wall, and again when it fell to the floor.

“Shit…” She groaned, but didn’t get up to check how bad the damage was. She couldn’t. She just sat there on her bed, staring at her face-down phone in the opposite corner.

“Hey, kiddo, what was that noise?” Her dad appeared in the doorway with his gentle voice and gentle smile. She just pointed. He followed her indication to the device at his feet and bent to pick it up without hesitation. “Well, good thing we got you that heavy-duty case. That’s an impressive drop.”

Langa reached out a hand and barely looked at the completely intact screen when the phone was handed to her. Her dad sat down with one of his old man noises, as he liked to call them, and Langa pulled her knees to her chest, arms folded and propped atop them, chin resting on her forearms.

“So.” He huffed, not annoyed or angry, just… neutral. “Want to tell me about your first day?”

She shook her head. There was nothing to tell, really. She’d gone to school, gone to class, come home, lost her mind. None of those things were out of the ordinary.

“Okay, want to tell me why you threw your phone across the room?”

She shook her head again, though that time it was a lie. She did want to tell him, she did, but how, when she couldn’t figure out what she was feeling, could she explain it to him? How could she make him understand when she didn’t even understand? All she’d done was look up some terms online. That shouldn’t have upset her. Why did it upset her?

“Hug?” Her dad offered with an open arm and Langa fell into his side with a quiet whine and no idea why she’d made the noise. “It’s fine if you don’t feel like talking. But you know you can, right? You can talk to your mom and me about anything.”

Langa just nodded against his shoulder, probably messing up her hair, but she didn’t really care about that. All she cared about right then was the firm grip her dad had around her shoulders and how nice the pressure was. He always gave the best hugs. Even when he was crushing her with his muscular arms, Langa always found it easier to breathe when locked in his embrace. Her mom gave good hugs too, but she wasn’t as strong, wasn’t as unrelenting with the force she was willing to put into her grip. She was better for snuggling, but Langa hadn’t really snuggled her mom since she was little.

She kind of wanted to…

“I love you, sweetheart.” Her dad placed a kiss on the top of her head, and for once, Langa didn’t mind the foreign touch near her hair. “Whenever you figure out… whatever this is, I’ll be here for you, okay?”

“I know.” The words came out easily, because she did know.

He stayed until Langa was half asleep against him, and she didn’t bother changing before bed.

For the next few weeks, Langa’s eyes were constantly on the clock while she was at school. Her feet couldn’t stay still and her deskmate in French class was always telling her off for clicking her pens too much, he even asked to move seats and left Langa on her own little two-seat island, which she was fine with. She was anxious to get to last period. Always.

It was interesting. Gender being a spectrum rather than just two options made a lot of sense. The person in the class who used they/them pronouns was very open about being nonbinary, and talked a lot during open discussion. There was an empty seat at their table, and Langa ended up sitting next to them sometime during the second week of class.

“Langa right?” They’d asked when they walked into the room and found her sitting at their table. She’d just nodded back as they sat down with a smile. “That’s a cool name, where are you from?”

“Uh, my mom is Japanese, but Langa’s not a Japanese name.” Her level tone surprised her, she’d not spoken a word in this class since the beginning of the year, but this person seemed… nice? Safe? Something. Something had drawn Langa to sit near them. She should probably learn their name… “I was named after a friend of my dad’s from… Iceland, I think?”

“Oh, that’s super cool!” They genuinely seemed to think so. “Oh, manners, duh, I’m Ash.”

“Cool.” Wow. What a great conversation. She really needed to work on her people skills. Her elementary school friends were easy. They were so chaotic she just had to sit there and listen, answer questions when she was asked, and occasionally throw a ball around with them. They weren’t conversationalists so much as they just liked to yell.

“So what brings you over to the table by the window?” Ash didn’t seem to mind Langa’s social ineptitude and just kept talking as they pulled out their binder, reminding Langa that she should do the same.

“Change of scenery.” Langa shrugged, wasting time while she tried to make the actual reason she moved sound less creepy. “And uh… I kind of wanted to… talk to you.”

“To me?” Ash made a weird face, but not a bad one, Langa didn’t think. They just kind of looked, curious, maybe?

“Uh, yeah, just-” It had sounded creepy. She could have said something about how she wasn’t a stalker and she hadn't even known Ash’s name, but she didn’t think that would help. “When we have discussion time, you always have a lot to say, I thought it might be… valuable.”

“Oh, gotcha!” Okay, that was an okay thing to say. God, socializing was tiring. “Well I’m happy to have you, I hope you get what you’re hoping to get out of this! Was that a sentence? I’m not sure if that was a sentence…”

Langa smirked and almost laughed at that. Ash was incredibly expressive, Langa hoped she’d be able to pin down some of their emotions sooner rather than later. “It was a bunch of words put together, I think that counts as a sentence.”

“Oh good.” Ash wiped their forehead with the back of their hand and made another completely new face. “English is hard.”

Sitting next to Ash did turn out to be valuable. They explained gender dysphoria to the table, much better than any online source had for Langa yet. They said gender dysphoria felt like looking in a mirror and seeing someone different staring back at you. And euphoria felt like looking in a mirror and finally seeing yourself for the first time. That made way more sense than anything Langa had read so far.

She kept sitting next to Ash in class. They exchanged numbers and started texting some outside of school. They were okay with Langa asking questions, and always answered enthusiastically, but Langa tried not to ask too many for fear of annoying them. She kept it to one per day. Maybe two if she needed clarification on something.

Things were starting to make sense.

And that was terrifying.

She chalked it up to just understanding the curriculum and shoved aside the what-ifs.

No need to explore that.

Especially not when some things were starting to feel so right.

Nope.

She wasn’t thinking about it.

Not until she was absolutely certain.

She kept sitting with her elementary school friends at lunch, but she always waved to Ash and who she assumed were their friends in the cafeteria. She would glance over at them a lot when she wasn’t actively involved in the conversation. Their table seemed a little quieter than Langa’s, but they also seemed to be having just as much fun. She kind of wanted to be at that table. The people there had dyed hair and cool clothes and fun makeup, while Langa’s friends were just a bunch of jocks who couldn’t have an intelligent conversation to save their lives.

“Langa likes dick though.” The sound of her name brought her gaze away from Ash’s table of friends and back to her rowdy crowd.

“What?” She asked with what was probably a straight-up dumbfounded look on her face.

“You like dick, right?” She couldn’t even see who was asking the question through all the noise coming from not only their table but the entire cafeteria.

“I like dudes, yeah.” She agreed with a shake of her head, which was kind of silly, she should have been nodding.

“Same difference.” Seriously, who was talking?

“Not really, though.” She shook her head more firmly this time, and that was the right action. “Some dudes don’t have dicks. And not all dicks are attached to a dude.”

“What are you on about?”

“I’m just saying, trans people exist.” Langa shrugged and completely gave up on locating the people who were talking.

“Oh come on, you buy into that shit?”

“Takes one gender studies class, becomes woke.”

“That shit just weirds me out, I don’t want a girl with man parts.”

“Fuck off, Langa, don’t be so sensitive.”

“Those people are just freaks, honestly.”

“Crazy bitches thinking they can change and shit.”

“Oh and what about those in-betweeners? You can’t just not have a gender.”

“Right? So fucked.”

Langa’s hand slamming down on the table silenced the lot of them, and scared the shit out of herself, but not as much as her own voice. “Shut the fuck up!”

“Bro, chill.” Someone tried but she just stood up, chair screeching and clattering as it flew backwards.

“No. Fuck you.” She spat and ran out of the cafeteria.

Well.

That wasn’t what she was expecting.

But she couldn't fucking breathe and everything was too loud and those assholes were saying shit that made her ribs feel like they were caving in on her and she really wanted to take one of her sports bras off because the seams were digging into her and her t-shirt suddenly felt really itchy and her socks were bunching up and the fluorescent lights were setting her eyes on fire and she couldn’t see and she couldn’t hear but everything was so loud and-

“Langa, hey, take a breath.” Hands appeared on her shoulders, the grip was bruising, bone-crushing, her shoulders were dislocating, but that was okay. It was something to focus on. “Come on, try to breathe.”

She couldn’t. Her lungs were inside out, outside of her body, somewhere in the stratosphere. The empty space in her chest was pure fire, flames licking up her throat and into her head, ashes and embers crumbling into her stomach. But how, when she didn’t have lungs to provide her body with oxygen, was there a bonfire raging within her? Shouldn’t it have been suffocated before it could catch? That didn’t make sense. None of this made sense. Why was she so upset?

“No, no, don’t do that.” Don’t do what? What was she not supposed to do?” One of the hands left her shoulder and ended up around her wrist. She couldn’t tell if it was her own hand or the other person’s that bumped against her forehead. What was her hand doing up there? And who was with her? She hadn’t even thought about that. Who had the displeasure of seeing the first meltdown of her high school career?

Well.

The first one at school.

She’d had plenty at home.

And she wasn’t entirely sure this was a meltdown.

“That’s it, good, keep breathing, you got it.”

Apparently she was breathing? So maybe her lungs were still in her chest. Well, she supposed she’d be dead if they weren’t.

Oh god, was she dying? Was this what dying felt like? Was that why it hurt so bad? Was that why she couldn’t see?

“You’re okay, you’re safe.”

Was she though? Dying wasn’t safe. Dying was kind of the opposite of safe. She was only fourteen, she wasn’t supposed to die yet.

“You’re doing so good, just listen to my voice and keep breathing.”

She still wasn’t sure she was breathing, nor that she was listening, but her company seemed to think that was the case, so she guessed it might be true. She tried paying attention, and did in fact feel breath being dragged in and out of her lungs, but it felt heavy, stinging, aching, more like water than air.

But the school wasn’t filled with water. So it couldn’t be water. If it was water she would be dead. So it wasn’t water.

“There you go, just keep breathing, you’re okay.”

The words kept coming and her body stopped hurting so much with every breath she managed to take, now that she was aware of her breathing.

Unfortunately, she was also aware of her heartbeat.

And it seemed to be attempting to shatter her sternum from the inside.

“You with me?”

Langa took a shaking breath before looking up to see the owner of the voice. She knew it was Ash, she’d figured it out at some point, but looking her kind of friend in the eye right now seemed… impossible. So she just nodded and pulled her knees to her chest to hide her face.

Wait… how had she ended up on the ground?

Where was she?

Her eyes darted around and she caught sight of a steel door frame and the floor lever you step on to turn the tap on.

Oh.

Bathroom.

“Langa?”

“I’m sorry.” She muttered and pressed her forehead into her knees, shame washing over her in a hot wave from her forehead down to her chest.

“Don’t apologize, I just want to know if you’re okay.” Ash didn’t sound annoyed. They’d never sounded annoyed, out of all the times Langa had talked to them, they’d never sounded annoyed. Not once.

“How did you…?” She couldn’t finish the question. Her throat was filling up, threatening to cut off her words entirely.

“You kind of… made a scene.”

Oh. Right. She’d punched the table and then screamed at her idiot friends. That was probably a hell of a sight.

“It’s okay, don’t be embarrassed about it. I’m sure those guys deserved it. You sounded real mad. I’ve never heard you yell, I’ve never even heard you talk loud, it was kind of impressive.”

“They were being transphobic.” It escaped her somehow, a barebones explanation that turned into an uncontrollable stream of consciousness ramble. “They were calling trans people freaks and saying they were crazy for thinking they could change and telling me I was being too sensitive and they called nonbinary people in-betweeners and said you can’t be that but you can because you are and they don't understand but that doesn’t mean they get to be bigots and I just got so angry because it felt like they were attacking because I think I might be trans.”

Shit.

Did she actually say that?

Shit.

Fuck.

Shit.

“You do?” Ash’s question was gentle, much gentler than their usual upbeat tone, and somehow, that was what brought tears to Langa’s eyes.

“I do.” She nodded into her knees and pulled them closer. “I think I’m a guy… I have dysphoria. I have all my life. Since I was a kid. I didn’t know what it was, but I do now. And I have euphoria sometimes. But it’s all so confusing because I’ve never considered any other options until I took the class and started talking to you and you answer all my questions and I appreciate it so much and I’m just-” a sob cut her off, wet and sticky and painful, but it didn’t stop her entirely. “I’m so confused and I don’t know what to do about it and it’s so scary to know that that’s what it is because people act like that and I don’t want people to act like that.”

“Okay, keep breathing, we don’t need you panicking again.” Langa choked on her first breath, but got the second one in and out with just some shaking. “Good, good. I’m proud of you.”

“You are?” She dragged her head up from her knees to see the nod and the soft smile on Ash’s face. Sincerity. That’s what that look was.

“I am. It’s really hard to face your feelings like that. It’s also really scary to tell off a group of jocks the way you did.”

“They’re just assholes, they’re not scary.” Langa smirked slightly at the thought of the group of boneheads she hung out with.

“I’m also proud of you for telling me.” Ash reached out a hand and Langa took it. She wasn’t sure why she did, but the touch was nice. A firm grip around her fingers was almost as good as a hug from her dad, but not quite. “And I’m glad you trusted me enough to tell me.”

“To be honest, I didn’t mean to.” Langa’s teeth sunk into her bottom lip. “It just kind of… came out.”

“Well, even so. How does it feel? To say it out loud?”

She considered for a moment, and the force of her smile pulled her lip right out of her teeth. “It feels really good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

“I just…” Her smile fell again, just as quickly as it had come. “I don’t know what to do from here.”

“Well, you don’t have to, but do you think your parents would be supportive if you came out?”

“Yes.” The answer was automatic. Her parents had been listening to her ramble about gender and trans topics for weeks now.

They probably wouldn’t even be surprised.

“Well, if you come out to them, they’ll be able to help you with doctors and stuff, if you decide you want hormones and things. But that’s like, down the line. You usually have to do a lot of therapy and assessments first before they give you anything. I’m getting way ahead of myself here. Do you want to try out new pronouns, a new name?”

“I like my name.” That was automatic too. “It’s not like it's common enough for anyone to make assumptions anyway. But uh… he/him pronouns, maybe?”

“Done!”

Ash dragged him off the bathroom floor and back to the cafeteria to get his bag, where none of the boys would look at either of them, then dragged him to their table, where they introduced him with his newly preferred pronouns and that scarcely familiar, buzzing warmth flared to life in his chest.

But this time he had a name for it.

And the euphoria continued when he got home.

He went home and told his parents. It was a lot easier than he thought, and he was right, they both pretty much knew. His dad brought up Langa not correcting the guy who called him “little man” on the slopes all those years ago and how much he’d lit up when that had happened. His mom cited all of his “girls can be strong too” moments, and they both brought up his current special interest in gender and trans rights. He got the best hug of his life, complete with tears, and they all sat down to do what Ash said and look into doctors and therapists.